Ulysses - Gabler Edition [266]
BLOOM
Eh! Ho! (There is no answer. He bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (there is no answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (he bends again and hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!
STEPHEN
(frowns) Who? Black panther. Vampire. (he sighs and stretches himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels)
Who ... drive ... Fergus now
And pierce ... wood’s woven shade ..?
(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)
BLOOM
Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (he bends again and undoes the buttons of Stephen’s waistcoat) To breathe. (he brushes the woodshavings from Stephen’s clothes with light hand and fingers) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (he listens) What?
STEPHEN
(murmurs)
.... shadows ... the woods
... white breast ... dim sea.
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom, holding the hat and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks down on Stephen’s face and form.)
BLOOM
(communes with the night) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him. (he murmurs) ..... swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts ...... (he murmurs) ..... in the rough sands of the sea ... a cabletow’s length from the shore .... where the tide ebbs .... and flows .....
(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.)
BLOOM
(wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY
(gazes, unseeing, into Bloom’s eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
III: The Nostos
Eumaeus
Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His (Stephen’s) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman’s shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver street or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier’s and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of Dan Bergin